


Edith Piaf Said it Better

by revengeandotherdrugs



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Idiots in Love, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of alcohol, M/M, Post-Canon, Probably ooc, Theo Decker's Toxic Masculinity, Why Doesn't Popchik Have A Character Tag?, brief sex scene, film canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 21:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20982461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: After the recovery of the painting Boris takes Theo to Paris for some much needed R&R. Being in such close proximity to one another again brings several things to light.





	1. No Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> So this is film canon rather than book canon because I simply can not bring myself to fuck with the book that means so much to me and the film is just different enough that I can justify it. This is also halfway a self-indulgent love letter to Paris, in fact, it's mostly that. 
> 
> Posting this is one of the scariest things I've ever done, please be kind.

Boris does not like Paris. He finds it confusing, pretentious, too old, almost stolid compared to the frenetic energy of New York or Berlin. The understated opulence of proper Parisian dress makes him feel exposed while the general distaste for anyone not French or not of old money gives him the constant feeling of being scrutinized for being gauche, too Slavic, too poor like he missed a streak of subliminal dirt somewhere on his soul. No, Paris is not his city but he owns a flat there anyway; seldom occupied except as a place to store things or put one or two of his men up for a night’s R&R. It’s also where he decides to bring Theo, it’s a good safe place to wait until the good news of the recovery of the painting has properly sunk in. 

“It is not my territory and am not interested in making it so either” he explains to Theo on the train from Amsterdam, “is mostly the Arabs and the Australians. And do not want to fuck with the Australians” he laughs, a little forced. Theo isn’t listening, staring out the window with the glassy eyes of someone just awakened from a nap they hadn’t meant to take. “I don’t come here often honestly, is boring and old and grasp of french is…” he makes a farting noise with his tongue, trying to make Theo laugh. He may as well be talking to a brick wall for all the reaction he gets. Boris shrugs. This is, of course, not the first time he’s been witness to one of Theo’s moods. In their childhood, during long nights laying in the silent inferno of the desert with Theo unresponsive beside him Boris would wonder where he went when he got like this, what part of himself was so deep, secret, and unreachable that it could not be shared? He learned to let it go, which is what he does now, getting up to find the bar car and leaving Theo swimming somewhere in the black depths of his mind. 

Paris, when they reach it, is steely and uninviting, all of the Christmas cheer having bled out leaving the city depressed, monochrome and anemic. The sky and the buildings are matching shades of bone grey while the air feels sharp and alive, pungent with cigarette smoke, exhaust, and the dark, dead smell of river water. 

Women in their thousand euro ballet flats and men in label-less designer suits, notable only for their fit and quality of material, march up and down the street, smoking, or waiting for buses, phones cupped to ears the emotional rise and fall of clipped Parisian French echoing like the wings of birds. Boris feels uncomfortably exposed and gaudy in his designer boots and bedazzled watch, Theo in his plain-jane suit looks more at home despite his dazed look and ill pallor. Boris takes his arm through his, biting his lower lip in anxiety letting the taller man lean on him long enough for a cab to be hailed; suicide hangovers are nothing to joke about, Boris knows better. 

Boris’ apartment is a 3rd-floor single bedroom overlooking a potted courtyard in the 4th arrondissement, around the corner from the Place des Vosges. He’d bought it on a whim, early in his career when he still had the option to forget himself and play at normalcy on occasion (the location, of course, is another reason he seldom uses it anymore, it comes with a reputation he can’t afford to have). But it’s quiet, secure, a good place for a recovery.

He buzzes them in through the front door, leading Theo across the courtyard and through into the foyer to climb the carpeted spiral staircase.

“Is not grand” he jokes, disarming the alarm by the door with practice “no precious antique furniture for you to moon over”

The flat itself is tastefully decorated although without much personality, save the record player and high-quality sound system Boris has in every one of his houses. The air has a stale, cooped-up smell that he opens the windows in an attempt to dispel. The sounds of the street are muffled on this side of the building, only the soft sounds of the wind through the leaves of the plants in the courtyard to be heard, it’s almost peaceful. Upstairs someone is watching the news, the rise and fall of half-discernable speaking like ghosts whispering through the ceiling. He finds two beers in the otherwise empty fridge, wonders absently if beer can expire, before shrugging and cracking them open with the butt of his lighter. Theo has fallen onto the sofa, his elbows on his knees and his head cupped in his hands. He looks shell-shocked, like those portraits of soldiers just come home from war; thousand-yard stare and a volatile trembling in the grim set of his mouth. 

Boris gently wraps Theo’s fingers around the beer bottle, a member of an arctic rescue crew trying to resuscitate a frozen corpse. He takes his own beer to the kitchen island, perching halfway on one of the barstools ostensibly checking his phone for messages but mostly watching the leonine slump of Theo’s head, red-gold hair gone grey in the gloom.

He finishes his beer and leaves Theo in his self-imposed stupor to go to the Russian market for the essentials; proper vodka, proper bread, a bar of chocolate, a tin of herring in jelly. Then to the pharmacy for gauze and antiseptic for his arm. The shopkeepers don't recognize him. The anonymity is both frustrating and welcome. 

Theo is still curled up on the sofa when he returns but the beer is gone and he has roused himself enough to get the ashtray from the table and light a cigarette. He looks unreal in the slate-grey light from the window, almost like something carved from marble so still is he inside himself. There is, in the set of his shoulders, something of that old familiar sadness that Boris knows so well and, if he squints, he can almost see the boy inside the man, that cloud-faced kid who has haunted his every step throughout the rest of his life. He would call the feeling that rises in him tenderness if he dared give it a name. 

“Alright, Potter?” he says instead, pulling the bar of chocolate out of his bag and breaking two pieces off of it. 

“You have no interior decorating taste. I honestly don’t know what I expected” says Theo, voice hoarse from lack of use “to be fair you never had any, really”. 

“Ah! He’s back! Here” Boris exclaims, handing him the bottle of vodka and a piece of chocolate “soul food! Get you back on feet in no time!” He settles himself down on the sofa too, taking Theo’s half a cigarette from where he rested it in the ashtray to open the vodka.

“I think I have some benzos around somewhere,” Boris says watching Theo fidget with the hem of his shirtsleeves. Theo shakes his head no. “suit yourself then” 

The benzos are in a little jar in the cabinet over the stove which Boris has to stand on a chair to reach. He leaves a pill for Theo, broken up into a line on a china saucer just in case he changes his mind. Half asleep already Boris turns on the tv, looking, half-blind, for an old movie like the ones they used to watch in Vegas, something black and white and familiar. It feels like deja-vu, like a re-treading of old patterns of their childhood; Boris high on something, Theo maudlin and drinking for the blackout, all that’s missing is Popchik. 

Halfway through "Bande à Part" Theo staggers off to the bedroom with no goodnight save the sound of him falling into the mattress in a deadweight. Boris considers following him, curling up against his back like old times, craving that closeness with a bone-deep ache. He doesn’t follow. Instead, he takes the pill he’d left in the saucer for Theo and curls up on the sofa under Theo’s worn camel coat, the light from the TV creating pictures even behind his closed lids. 

+++

Ultimately things are as different as they are the same. Theo and Boris play a game of cat and mouse for the first day, unsure who is the cat and who the mouse (realizing, much too late, that they are either both cats or both mice). The painting has been recovered, Boris’ debt to this man he only vaguely knows anymore has been paid, he has no reason to stay and play host; and yet he stays. Boris deflects calls from associates, angry voicemails in Russian and English from Katya and Gyuri asking him where the fuck he is and what the fuck he’s doing (the truth is, Boris doesn’t have an answer to that last question himself). 

On the surface what he’s doing is drinking a lot, barely leaving the house, helping Theo recover from his own existential ordeal in the only way he knows how; booze, drugs and copious amounts of chocolate and brown bread. But truly there is violence at the core of Boris, a war between what he remembers and reality. It’s almost like there are two pictures of Theo, Theo then and Theo now, and, if he tries, Boris can reconcile the two into something resembling cohesion. But the illusion is fleeting and breaks apart if he loses concentration. The man in Boris’ house is far from the child he knew and yet they are the same; they smile in just the same way, little quirk of the mouth, little crinkle of the nose, same look of unmoored sadness in the same grey eyes. What is worrying is how the feelings have seemed to evolve, to grow, to fit the size and adultness of both of them. It has all become weightier somehow, more serious, more  _ real.  _ Half of Boris wants to stay and see what happens next, the other half of him wants to simply get up and leave, abandon Theo like Theo abandoned him; forget about it all once and for all. 

Neither of them talk much the second day, Theo primarily sleeps; the sleep of the exhausted and relieved while Boris paces up and down the length of the main room, biting his nails and smoking. He doesn’t regret bringing Theo here, but some part of him balks at the proximity. Things come back to him at inopportune moments; the sharky coldness of the gun against his temple, the bright hot flash of pain from the bullet tearing through his arm, Theo’s death-pale face above the collar of his suit-jacket laid out, funerary-style, on the bed in the hotel room. It’s the latter more than the former which clutches at him with blind terror, the possibility of that world-swallowing loss breathing near and present even now. Something is stirring in the pit of his stomach, has been since New York, something old and massive which Boris had carefully imprisoned inside a box and done his best to forget about. 

On the third day, Theo finally rouses himself around two in the afternoon, comes wandering out of the bedroom stiffly with his hands over his light-sensitive eyes. 

“What’s the time?” he asks Boris, familiar, without preamble, sinking into the armchair across from his space on the sofa and reaching for the ashtray and Boris’ half-smoked pack of cigarettes. 

“After noon” Says Boris vaguely, watching his clever fingers on the lighter - his father’s old lighter, somehow Theo had kept it. The sight of it causes the carefully forgotten things inside Boris’ chest to shuffle restlessly. 

“I’d like to see some of the city,” Theo says “that is if you don’t mind” 

Boris doesn’t mind, is himself feeling cooped up and claustrophobic from sitting in the house the past few days. 

The day is bright white and cold, with even, low-hanging cloud cover refracting light from an unseen sun and painting the city in sickly monochrome. They take a circle round the park first, trying to decide where to go - arched windows of the red brick arcades look blindly down onto the swarms of people on their way from one place to another, the bare trees, and trash-fat ravens terrorizing the pigeons on the brown grass. Boris tries to carefully turn Theo’s attention from the types of bars they pass, the flags in the windows, feeling exposed and a little shifty. If Theo notices his artless deflection he doesn’t mention it, simply takes it all in with eyes as wide as saucers, marveling. They end up cutting through the neighborhood in the direction of the Louvre, Theo making a derisive comment on the ugliness of the Pompidou as they pass it, shying away from the “disaster” of the Stravinsky fountain as if they were beasts out of a nightmare. Boris has always rather liked them, something comforting about their cheerful colors and broken-backed shapes against the smoky gloom of the square. 

Boris doesn’t so much watch where he’s going as he watches Theo; the way his head turns at the bark of some little white dogs, how he stops for a moment and gazes uncomprehendingly at a window display of pastries, his soft smile at a cat on a windowsill, the pleased crinkle of his nose at the sight of the old medieval buildings leaning listlessly into the street. 

The Louvre when they reach it is awash with tourists, backpacks and the little flags of tour groups meandering back and forth like fish in a bowl. The pyramid, glowing gold from the inside stands in the middle of the medieval courtyard like the crashed spaceship of some alien race, a beautiful incoherency. 

Theo looks at it with almost heartbroken longing. 

“We can go,” says Boris, shuffling to avoid a scooter cutting across the sidewalk, the driver, on his phone, taking no notice. 

Theo shakes his head “I’d rather not” it seems like it pains him to say it but Boris doesn’t push. 

“Come,” he says instead “this way” 

Boris leads him across the river, waiting as Theo, buffeted by tourists, stops to wonder at the view of Notre Dame. He takes them to the left bank, a stroll along the dark river to the border between the 6th and 7th arrondissements and lets Theo walk and marvel, waiting. When he stops dead in front of the plate glass window of a gallery, Boris knows he’s done well. 

“Would you mind if I…?” he asks, a child in front of a candy shop, gesturing with his eyes to the door. 

Boris simply holds the door open for him to step inside. 

The gallery is one that caters to the lesser masters; old illuminated manuscripts sharing space under glass with flemish miniatures in gilded frames, copies of famous sculptures that are almost as old as the originals occupying the same floor as lovingly restored furniture in the style of the Baroque and  Directoire ; the gold and auburn of the wood shining in the dim light. It is, in and of itself, a kind of museum; a museum for the tenacious things that refuse to be forgotten by history, the things that wanted to survive so badly that against all odds they did. 

Throughout his life, Boris had thought of himself as a competent one in relation to Theo. Theo needed someone to hold his hand and wipe his face and teach him what drugs were which and how to shoplift properly. That had been the reality of their dynamic throughout childhood, Boris was the teacher and Theo his adept and clever student. (That is not to say that Theo hadn’t taught him anything, but those were massive, world-ending things of ultimately little consequence; like love and loss and heartbreak). The point is that Boris likes to think that he  _ knows  _ Theo, perhaps even more than his little girlfriends back in New York do. He has seen Theo cry, seen him blacken and shrivel up on himself in misery, seen him seen him standing on the roof high on ecstasy, embracing the night sky like he could hold the entire universe in his arms. 

Theo in the presence of art becomes a stranger to Boris. He strolls from painting to painting in an easy, assured stride, expounding on the beauty of a brushstroke or the mixture of pigment, bending lower to bring himself closer to the piece, gasping in delight over minutiae that Boris can neither see nor understand. There is a light about him, something wise and honey-colored, almost religious; like the icon of Saint Matthew Boris’ mother had kept over the stove in their house in Kyiv, half-familiar. Theo speaks with the gallerists in halting Frenglish, using words that Boris doesn’t understand like “chiaroscuro” and “pentimenti” and “value” which, he surmises, they mean in a way that doesn’t involve money. He is equal parts enamored and offended by Theo’s knowledge, and, at the same time, perversely jealous of the care and love he shows to those inanimate things. 

“I don’t understand” he gripes afterward. They’re sitting at a cafe smoking and drinking  demitasses of oily, black espresso; the heat lamps are doing little to stave off the chill but their glow paints Theo’s hair in copper and his cheeks pink with warmth. Theo still has something beatific about him, a holy brightness behind his eyes that Boris wants to do anything to make him keep forever “Why is not enough to simply  _ like _ art? For it to simply be beautiful? Why must it be so explained?”  It’s not that Boris doesn’t like art, he does, in fact, it was Theo who first showed him the beauty of it, but the endless breaking-down of the little things, the big words, the bookish-sounding nature of the whole affair was rather a turn-off. 

“Intimacy” Theo explains succinctly his eyes half-wild behind the panes of his glasses “every little thing changes the way you look at a work, you may know it through glancing at a piece, simply through the act of observation but to be able to  _ describe _ these little things, these little changes is like opening up a whole different world; suddenly things make sense. It’s all about giving a name to your love”

“A name to your love” Boris repeats, lighting another cigarette and rolling his eyes “so if you love something you bore to death? No wonder you’re not married, Potter. Is not enough simply to love something?” 

Theo doesn’t look at him, studiously stubbing out his cigarette in the covered metal ashtray. “Perhaps,” he says after a moment “it’s a way to make the love a little smaller so that it stops being so overwhelming. If you can talk about something, really pick it apart, it doesn’t have the power to ruin you anymore.” 

The silence falls a little heavier than it was supposed to. They never used to talk like this, except when Theo was blind drunk, and it’s making Boris’ palms itch inside his gloves, feeling juvenile and exposed. 

“Come,” he says finally “know where to go for dinner. Afterwards we party like old times, Potter”

The walk back to the Marais is companionable in its silence, the light slowly leaching out of the day and painting the streets blue and hazy in the moments before the streetlights turn on. Boris takes him to a cafe across the little park from the Cirque d’Hiver with its young professional crowd and the patterned pillows and the low, antique light. They eat foie gras and onion soup and share an order of steak frites for old time's sake. It’s warm and intimate and when Theo goes quiet sometime around his fourth glass of pays d’oc Boris knows he’s thinking of his mother. 

“She would have loved it here,” he says, finally, eyes bright and shining with some half-baked memory. Boris watches his reflection in his coffee spoon, face bent all wrong, glasses gigantic and forehead wavy, the funhouse mirror flip of it. 

“Why here?” asks Theo after a long moment, rousing himself from whatever memory he’d gotten lost in. 

“Ah?” 

“Why on earth do you have a house here? I wouldn’t expect it to be your… style” 

“Is not,” He says, leaning over to steal a spoonful of Theo’s creme brulee “Dirty, cold, nothing to do. Terrible place” Then, sighing at Theo’s raised eyebrow “was young, had two million euros in pocket, most money I’d ever seen in my life. Everyone says ‘go to Paris, Boris! Culture! Light! Fun!’ so I come and I buy flat sight unseen, cost all my money. Should have looked a bit at neighborhood first but oh well” He means it as only half a joke, watching closely to try and judge Theo’s reaction. 

Theo doesn’t seem to have understood which is both a relief and a disappointment. Boris feels a bit as though he’s tightrope walking. 

In childhood Boris had never truly felt the need to hide himself, mostly because no one paid him any attention anyway; he was always invisible, always passed over, almost always alone. That loneliness had taught him self-sufficiency and a blanket acceptance of himself as he was; he lived in a world where he was the sole inhabitant, a world where he made all the rules. Theo had blown that all apart. Suddenly, at the age of 14, Boris’ lonely, aimless, little planet had found something to revolve around.

Theo’s halfhearted, juvenile homophobia hadn’t really phased Boris at the time. Theo said what he said and did what he didn’t say; that was always how it was. The things they had done together as children had simply been logical to Boris’ mind; he loved Theo, Theo loved him, and that was all there was for quite some time. Of course, growing up and acclimating to criminal society had forced Boris underground in more ways than one. He wonders how, or even if, Theo copes with the things so obviously warring for dominance inside him, whether or not that war had made him violent or cold and what he would say to a confession should Boris ever decide to offer one.

It’s not hard to find substances of arguable legality if one knows where to look which, thankfully, Boris still does. They have a couple of beers at a popular fashion-crowd bar, huddled together over one of the sidewalk tables, Boris keeping a weather eye out. Dealers are never hard to spot for anyone who has ever been in or around the business; even the well-adjusted ones have something hawk-eyed about them, watching exits, looking for potential customers, trying to differentiate themselves from the crowd but not in too obvious a way. The girl who sidles up to their table at Boris’ gesture is friendly enough throughout the establishment of trust, though her English isn’t good. She has buck teeth and thin blonde hair like cornsilk, her coat is vintage and clearly had been fashionable once, with paint around the sleeves. Some kind of art-student, Boris reckons, looking to earn some money on the side. She takes Boris for a walk around the block, chatting all the while, her slim, black-wool clad arm through his. He returns to the table with two grams of cocaine and a rather rocky bag of E which he was assured is “top!”. The girl wanders away down the block, happy with the wad of banknotes Boris had given her in exchange. 

“I have rule never to pay for drugs,” he says, knocking back the rest of his beer in one. “But is what it is. Up!” He pulls Theo to his feet, a little unsteady on his own already, somehow, and leads him to the bathroom. 

They cram into a stall, giggling like schoolboys. Theo’s cheeks are pink from the alcohol and his presence at Boris’ back as he breaks up some of the coke into lines on the screen of his phone feels like a bonfire. Theo passes him an adeptly rolled 5 euro note without having to be asked, pressing close to Boris’ spine, arms coming round to hold the phone steady as Boris does his line. 

He tosses his head back and waits for the drip - delicious when it comes, spicy and sickly sweet at the back of his throat, shuffling around in the confined space to let Theo take his turn. Their fingers brush when they pass the bill off and Boris clocks the tingling in his arm up to the drugs, although in all his years of doing coke it has never felt like this.

Theo runs his finger around the phone screen after he’s done, catching missed bits and rubbing them on his gums, practiced, like Boris had taught him all those years before. 

“‘S not bad,” he says, smacking his tongue against his teeth to try and get the lingering rocks to melt. 

“My people have better - in New York,” says Boris, catching the residue Theo left behind before slipping his phone back into his pocket; trying not to watch the way Theo sucks on the finger in his mouth. Truthfully though, it’s not bad, perhaps a little light, weight-wise, but for buying solely off the street it could have gone much worse. 

This is not the type of place to bat an eye at two men leaving a bathroom stall together but all the same, Boris sends Theo out first, ordering him to get another round of beer. The coke has sobered him up significantly, bringing the heady downward spiral of drunkenness back up into an easy, honeyed hum that promises to go all night. He washes his hands in the sink, turning the water up too hot simply to feel it burn along the newly awakened nerves. Lights are brighter now, colors more intense, everything flavored by the sharp soapy tang that lingers still at the back of his throat. 

Theo is waiting outside with their beers in plastic cups, chatting animatedly to a modelesque redhead in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton. It shouldn’t bother him, the way she leans a little too close letting her perfumed hair fall over her face, the way she grabs Theo’s arm as she laughs - high and tinkly and over-the-top - or the way Theo looks pleased with this reaction. But it does bother him, rather a lot. 

“Come,” he says to Theo, delicately plucking the untouched pint from his hand “There’s another place we can go” 

“Oh you're going somewhere else?” says the woman, her accent is Australian with a lingering pang of money - boarding schools in the alps, summers on Lago di Como - “I was just thinking of heading out myself, this place is  _ such _ a bore when you don’t know anyone. Why don’t we go together!” 

The look Boris gives her makes her throw up her hands in acquiescence, giggling. 

“Or not. You have my facebook though right?” she says turning to Theo “send us a message later maybe, and we can meet up”

“Cockblocker,” says Theo, almost fondly, jostling his elbow into Boris’ shoulder, watching her melt into the crowd. 

“You’re engaged” replies Boris snidely, causing Theo to cough “Plus you are staying at my house. Do not want floozy in my bed”

It’s only a short walk to the second bar of the night; a restaurant which only moonlights as a late-night spot - dark wood and white tablecloths and low candle-light on the upstairs balcony with a significantly more grungy smoking lounge in the disused wine-cellar down below. They finish their beers on the walk over, talking and laughing, a little unsteady on their feet. 

It’s early yet, most of the traditional bars still open and the usual night-owl clientele still drinking elsewhere. They order a pichet of red wine and a pair of shots which they do at the bar, elbows interlocked like grooms at a wedding. The smoking lounge, when they descend to it is deserted; cold stone walls, vague smell of stale smoke, Theo’s face painted in grenadine from the low, red light. They do bumps of E off of the back of Theo’s hand, not much, just what they could break up quickly and surreptitiously, leaning on each other. 

Somehow the conversation shifts to teenagerhood, what they had missed of each other's growing up. Theo speaks of his studies (“I took conversational Russian! I told you, remember?”) various loves and losses, a trip he and Hobie took upstate one winter - telling a glorious story of Popchik in the snow that has Boris in stitches with laughter. For his part, he tells Theo nothing, comfortable simply to bask in the warmth of this honey-colored world Theo is expertly painting for him (it’s mostly a veneer of course, he knows that) and try and piece together the missing bits in his picture of Theo as he is now. 

The cellar is beginning to fill up, several knots of regulars taking up their accustomed tables, lighting cigarettes, clinking glasses. A man in a motorcycle jacket takes up a place at the out-of-tune piano in the corner and begins to play something jazzy and boisterous and not entirely practiced.

“I wonder how things could have been different” Theo says, after a long pause, “if we had stayed in Vegas. if none of this had happened”

Boris gets socked in the mouth by the fist of a long-dead possibility; him and Theo squatting in one of those empty houses, stolen dinners in the dried-up pool, growing into wild men with long hair and feral eyes half-mad with love who faded slowly into obscurity and nothingness, long night walks into the black hole of the desert with Popchik running alongside. 

“Would be dead probably,” he says pragmatically “Certainly would not be here, now” 

Theo looks at him strangely for a moment then flings his head back and laughs. He looks practically incandescent in the low neon glow; cheeks pink and eyes wild. 

“I never had any regrets, you know,” he says, going rather soft all of a sudden, leaning forward into Boris’ space, all the laughter draining away “about any of the things we did” 

“No regrets?” says Boris “never?” he sounds shocked to his own ears, his heart beating frenetically in a way that is only half to do with the drugs. 

Boris shakes his head in an attempt to clear it, taking a careful sip of his wine. He’s feeling light and sparkly like champagne in a glass, the edges of the room blurring into multichrome obscurity. The man at the piano stops playing and Boris almost calls out in a panic for him to start again, the crush of voices too harsh suddenly. 

“I thought of you all the time” his drugged yet happy earnestness throws Boris, he has never in all his years known Theo to be  _ earnest  _ “every day I wondered what you were doing, if you were even alive. I had nightmares of you dead in a ditch somewhere…I  _ missed  _ you, so many nights I lay awake and thought of all the things I would tell you the next time I saw you...” 

“Need some air,” he says, pushing away from the table so hard his chair falls back with a slam. 

“Boris!” Theo calls after him, followed by the sound of another chair toppling. 

The night, when he bursts out into it is damp and cold like a slap to the face after the smoky closeness of the cellar. Cobblestones, glazed with freezing rain, glitter colorful and unreal in the streetlights. Theo rushes out of the door behind him, the bouncer yelling halfheartedly about bringing a lit cigarette out of the smoking-room.

“Boris, please!” he says, grabbing at his shoulder, spinning Boris round to face him, bringing him back into his orbit. He looks alarmed, lips parted on a half-said word. He can’t stand it. 

Boris pushes him, hard. He may be smaller now but he’s stronger, wiry, good in a fight. Theo stumbles, nearly falls, shock and pain flashing by turns across his face. 

“What the mother fuck!?” 

“If you cared so much why did you never call mmm?” he shouts “Try to find me? Thought you hated me! Thought you were so glad to be rid of me ‘good riddance, Boris, glad I got away’” He’s rambling but he can’t stop himself, his heart going a million miles an hour and his eyes jumping from point to point to point, never focusing. He feels manic, out of it, violent almost. “So fucking  _ selfish _ , Potter, I swear - wrapped up in old musty bureaus and  _ women _ ” the last word comes out in a sneer so vicious Boris almost feels bad about it, almost. 

“Boris, I..” 

“You left me! You did not even let me explain! Did not even say anything! I thought you hated me! You flake, you sheer fuck-all bastard!” He feels 15 again, standing at the end of that driveway in the middle of the desert, desperately searching Theo’s face for some semblance of understanding, some half-measure of his own heart reflected back at him. 

“I thought you were coming with me! I waited! And waited! Good God but I’ve been waiting for you my whole life!” 

That stops him short “I had to get painting back. Would never have forgiven myself otherwise - thought, perhaps, if I brought it back you would like me again” 

“I didn’t know,” says Theo, gently, a little awkwardly, like he’s trying to calm a wild animal or a hysterical child he doesn’t know “not about the painting or...any of the rest of it…” 

“Everything I did was because  _ I loved you, _ ” Boris says, slurring his words. There are flowers at the corner of his vision and he feels as though he has been run over by a car, all broken up inside. “You are, perhaps, only person I ever loved” 

Theo reaches out, whiplike, to grip the back of his neck. For a terrible lightning-flash moment Boris is afraid Theo is going to strike him, the child in him flinching - and, in that same moment, sees that Theo is afraid of the same thing, the half-desire to hit him almost overpowering. But the strike doesn’t come, there is no bright-hot flash of pain; Theo simply brings their foreheads together, tender somehow, his eyes wide and disbelieving behind his glasses, his breath hot against Boris’ mouth.

Somewhere suspended in the space between action and inaction Boris realizes that, truthfully, things could never have gone any other way - they have to lose each other, again and again, if only to recognize what it is, truly, that they are missing That perhaps they are doomed to a life of missed connections, two bodies that collide at certain predestined points before once again losing each other in the dark.

And then they’re kissing and everything is light and warmth and the soft insides of Theo’s mouth. It smells like death and the river and the cars going by on the street are honking their horns and for an instant Boris thinks he knows what the Big Bang felt like. 

“Take me home,” says Theo, something grave and frightened about the request.

Boris takes him home. 

It’s past three in the morning when they finally stumble up the stairs, fingers numb from the cold, high out of their minds, but Boris barely cares, let the neighbors lose their sleep. They tumble onto the bed in a mess of limbs and desperate heat; Theo’s shoes go flying somewhere in the vicinity of the door and Boris’ scarf ends up draped round the pendant lamp in the kitchen. He clambers into Theo’s lap, thankful suddenly in some back corner of his mind for having grown up the smaller of the two, cupping his face with desperate fingers and diving down to taste his mouth again. Theo’s mouth tastes of wine and smoke and the harsh chemically taste of the E and Boris can not get enough of it, desperate and all-consumed as he hasn’t been since he was a child - since the last time he and Theo had done this. 

The whole thing has the feeling of a half-remembered dance, movements coming back like forgotten words in a poem; Theo’s hand down his half-undone trousers, Boris’ fingers desperately pulling at shirt-buttons, at Theo’s belt, at his hair where it falls into his face. His eyes, when Boris removes his glasses for fear of breaking them, are luminous and glassy, pupils blown to the size of moon-craters. 

“Borya…” he says, breathless. The diminutive throws Boris a moment, sending a delicious shiver down his spine. 

“Don’t play game with me” He says, almost begging, fingers curled in the fabric of Theo’s half removed shirt “not unless you truly mean it” 

Theo laughs, almost hysterically, by way of answer, turning to bury his face in the crook of Boris’ neck, leaving soft kisses along the underside of his jaw that make Boris turn to jelly. He’s always been weak for Theo, it’s good to know some things never change. 

Boris manhandles Theo’s mouth back up to his, gasping at the feeling of Theo’s broad hand on the bare skin of his hip; his free hand following the knobs of Boris’ spine to clutch at the little curls of hair at the nape of his neck. Theo bends his head to bite at Boris’ collarbone, frightening him with the way he suddenly  _ wants _ to be marked up, to be owned. In that moment he wants, above all, to be something precious to Theo, one of his beautiful and treasured things.

Theo flips them, effortlessly it seems, pinning Boris under him with a roll of his hips and the brush of his spit-slick lips against Boris’ throat. They rock together, like ships at sea, too high to cum - nearly - but needing closeness still. 

They both lose time, too wrapped up in each other to care. The pleasure is overwhelming, waves of it; Theo’s exploratory tongue on his cock, his fingers dipping (ever so gingerly) into Boris’ hole, the way he tastes, salty and heady, the heavy, solid weight of him in Boris’ mouth. Most precious though is the way Theo gasps when he finally cums, the way he shakes through it, the way he clings to Boris’ arms - the hot wet splash against his stomach - enough, just by itself, to have Boris cumming too; almost as if it is wrung from him, painful in the rightness of it. 

Boris is almost asleep, drifting in that treacly dream-space between two states of being when Theo shuffles beside him. He presses his lips to Boris’ temple, kiss-chapped and raw.

“You-” he says, so softly Boris thinks he may be imagining it “-have held my heart this whole time”

They sleep as they used to as children; curled close, limbs intertwined, listening to the metronomic beat of each other’s hearts. 

+++

Boris wakes in the early evening to an empty bed and the scratchy sounds of an old Edith Piaf song echoing from the main room. Rain patters against the windowpane and the light is low and grey, tomblike, almost oppressive. 

Theo, buttoning his coat in the main room, turns at his approach; his hair is sleep-mussed and cheeks pink but there is something alive behind his eyes that Boris hasn’t seen before. His duffle bag is sitting, packed, by the front door; his shoes are on his feet.

“You’re leaving,” he says, it's not a question.

Theo has the decency to at least look a little guilty at this. “Yes” 

“Why?”

“I need to” 

Boris shrugs like his heart isn’t breaking just a little, hopping up to sit on the breakfast bar and lighting a cigarette. Theo, incandescent in the gloom, watches him with puppy eyes, begging for some kind of emotional entreatment that Boris won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing. 

“I won’t be long, a couple months - a year, maybe - and then I’ll go back to New York I just…” he falters a little “I need to do some soul searching I guess” 

This is the most vulnerable Boris has ever seen him while sober and the iridescent skinned-rawness of it is almost panic-inducing. He looks as though at any second he might simply shatter completely, fiddling with the top button of his coat, eyes on the floor.

Boris tries not to betray any emotion at all as he flicks ash into the tray “search some souls, Potter. Doesn’t bother me” 

“I’ll be back this time,” says Theo, so quiet Boris can barely hear it, still not meeting his gaze. 

He replies “you know where to find me, now” 

Theo doesn’t look back, (he never had, not to Boris at any rate) simply picks up his bag and walks out the door, the sounds of his footsteps on the stairs slowly fading into nothing before the front door opens, then shuts. Then there is silence save for the  _ tap-tap-tap  _ of rain on the window and the gravelly voice of Edith Piaf echoing round the empty room;

_ “...Balayé les amours  _

_ Avec leurs trémolos _

_ Balayé pour toujours _

_ Je repars à zéro _

_ Non, rien de rien _

_ Non, je ne regrette rien…”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're all adults here but it probably needs to be said: DO NOT mix E and coke (together or with alcohol). You will have a heart attack and die after taking much less than you think.
> 
> This fic (and the title) comes from the song "Edith Piaf Said It Better Than Me" by Sparks which is my favorite Boris song.


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People voted for a happy ending so here it is. I decided to put it in a separate chapter so that the story could either be left open or closed happily.

It’s late October and New York is gearing up for winter like the proverbial grasshopper - everything moving along at the same frantic pace, car horns and sirens and voices and lights at all hours of every day. The Village, in its lone little bubble, has gone quiet for the most part, orange and yellow leaves chasing each other down the street and piling up in drifts against storefronts and curbs. Boris is smoking on the stoop, watching the ash collect in a puddle on the concrete, waiting with almost unbearable anxiety. This is the third time he’s done this in the past ten months, come down to wait, and every time the man he’s waiting for hasn’t arrived. 

The sight of the cab rounding the corner (‘Newark to NYC, $30 flat-rate’) sends him leaping to his feet, heart rocketing into his throat. He stubs out his cigarette with the heel of his boot, frozen in place, almost. The urge to run is rising but he can’t bring himself to move. 

The man who steps out of the airport cab is barely one he recognizes. His hair has grown long, sandy blonde from sun and he’s tanned a deep gold which sets off his eyes, large and wondering behind his glasses, into chips of ice. There’s something easy in the way he holds himself now, some newfound genuine assuredness that puts Boris in mind of a lion or an Arthurian knight. He stops dead when he sees Boris, duffle bag slung over one shoulder, a little rolling suitcase resting by his knee. The cab pulls away from the curb in a puff of exhaust leaving the street quiet once again.

“You’re back,” says Boris, for lack of anything better to say, he feels shaky, searching almost desperately for some message in the impassive, familiar face. 

“I’m back,” says Theo. 

They spend a long moment just looking at each other; Boris wonders if he’s changed at all to Theo’s mind, if the shock of new grey hair at his temple is noticeable, if he looks different, older, also more himself. 

Theo suddenly spurred to movement, bridges the distance between them in two long strides, dropping the duffle bag with a dull thump, to take Boris into his arms in a soul-crushing embrace. He smells of recycled airplane air and sunshine and exotic spices and his heartbeat is real and warm and alive beneath Boris’ ear. He buries his nose in Boris’ hair, clutching him like a drowning man clutches a liferaft, like Boris is the only thing keeping him afloat. Boris wants to cry but forces himself not to, clinging to the back of Theo’s coat with desperate fingers and breathing in the salt smell of his skin. 

The bell over the shop door jingles, Hobie coming to stand with crossed arms in the doorway, a fond smile on his face. Upstairs Popchik is going crazy, his wheezy, geriatric bark coming through the open kitchen window. Theo pays them no attention.

“Did you search some souls?” Boris asks, glad that his face is still buried in Theo’s shoulder so he won’t see the tears or hear the way his voice cracks. 

“Yeah” he replies, softly, something thick in his voice, breathing out a shaky sigh. 

“And found what?” 

Theo holds him for a moment longer before pulling back slightly. His expression is soft and loaded with emotion and there’s a trembling to his mouth as he brings it down to meet Boris’. They’re kissing then, in broad daylight in front of Hobie and the neighbors and anyone who might be walking by and that, simply that, is answer enough for Boris. No more regrets, no more leaving things unsaid, simply loving and being loved, living and wanting to live. 

They break apart after a moment, laughing, breathless, Theo's cheeks pink. Boris picks up the duffle bag and, hand in hand, they head inside. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic (and the title) comes from the song "Edith Piaf Said It Better Than Me" by Sparks which is my favorite Boris song.


End file.
